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  • Rwanda`s Gacaca Courts: Looking back on an innovative mechanism of transitional justice
    ANALYSIS Elena Barth 22 October 2020 When emerging from a period of violence, oppression and systematic human rights abuses, transitional societies are necessarily concerned with the question of whether and how to enter into a process of judicial work-up of the past events and the rebuilding of their social fabric. Transitional justice designates an academic…
Everyone’s human rights – A series of debates on human rights in Africa
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Politics
  • Economic Globalization and COVID-19
    What lessons for food security in West Africa? OPINION Dr. Alhousseini DIABATE 10 August 2020 Under the impetus of international donors, West African countries have adopted the model of economic globalization and market economy as a means of combating food insecurity. The main argument put forward by the donors is that the globalization model makes it…
  • Black Lives Matter
    Prof. Dr Thoko Kaime 24 June 2020 The Chair of African Legal Studies expresses deep solidarity with the protests against structural racism and its daily manifestations in the USA, in Germany and elsewhere around the world. We firmly support the struggles for justice, equality and the protection of the rights of black people and people…
  • Luanda Leaks and the Turning Tide of Accountability for Africa‘s Political Elites
    COMMENT Prof. Dr Thoko Kaime and Lena Scheibinger, 4 June 2020 Introduction Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos ,faces allegations of corruption and embezzlement of state resources after the publication of the Luanda Leaks: a trove of  more than 715,000 confidential business and financial documents concerning Ms…
Human Rights
  • Child Marriage – The Impact of COVID-19 on the Practice of Child Marriage
    ANALYSIS Freda Louwes 5 October 2020 The Sustainable Development Goal 5.3 promotes the elimination of all harmful practices, such as child marriage, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (United Nations 2020). Still, child marriage remains a prevalent global issue. Child marriage refers to any marriage in which at least one of the two…
  • The legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and our collective responsibility
    COMMENT Isabelle Zundel 30 September 2020 It is a major challenge to introduce the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was way more than an American jurist. She was the second woman serving the Supreme Court. She is an idol for humans all over the world through her determined, lifelong campaign for women’s rights. Her death…
  • Peoples’ Rights in Africa: Bridging the Era of Independence Struggles with the Present
    COMMENT Cecilia Ngaiza 30 August 2020 Reading through the preamble to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1981 (hereinafter referred to as the “Charter”) one may gather an opinion that, peoples’ rights entrenched in the Charter were primarily designed to emphasise on total independence and development of the then colonised African societies. Such…